If you or somebody you know needs help paying for school, we are now accepting applications for TransCanada Community Scholarships.

Whether starting university or college for the first time, or returning to school to learn a new trade, paying for education can be challenging, especially when costs can vary from $5,000 to $50,000 per year. That’s one of the reasons why we launched the TransCanada Community Scholarships Program last year — to help students from the communities where we live, work and operate across North America reach their academic goals.

Our goal for this program is to support the development of a skilled energy workforce, while also giving back to our neighbours.

“I am so appreciative of TransCanada for awarding me with a Community Leaders Scholarship,” said Katie Bresnahan from Marquette, Neb. “The support for students, especially those from rural communities, is great to see."

We’ve made sure our Community Scholarships are available to students pursuing different post-secondary disciplines. Whether training to be a tradesperson, engineer or business professional, our scholarships can make school more affordable, and academic performance is not the only focus of our evaluation criteria.

“We look for more than good grades in our evaluation. We award students who show a strong commitment to leadership, volunteerism, community involvement and who describe a passion for learning,” said Leanne LeBlanc, Community Investment Lead, TransCanada.

Investing in education and developing high-demand and transferable skills in the communities where we do business is important to us and our neighbours — to promote sustainable local economies and to ensure that we have the workforce required to build and maintain TransCanada’s assets.

More scholarships and a trans-continental reach

In 2017, close to 300 TransCanada Community Scholarships, valued at more than $400,000, were awarded to passionate, hard-working students in all kinds of post-secondary programs across Canada and the U.S. In 2018, we’re back with more scholarships and we’ve increased our program footprint.

This year, we have expanded our Community Scholarships to support students in Mexico — increasing the value of the overall program to more than $600,000.

Answer five easy questions to find out if you pre-qualify, and once pre-qualified, completing the full application is simple.

If you know a student who could use some help paying for school, please share this article, tag them in the comments, or send them this link: TCScholarships.com. The application deadline is April 15, 2018 at 11:59:59 EST.